Post-apocalyptic fiction is an interesting genre to me (and evidently many others, though I wonder what this says about America), primarily because modern civilization has gotten so comfortable that the idea of breakdown and collapse has a sick fascination to it: what would happen to me when the lights go out and don't come back on? For a long time I was afraid that this genre was going to be monopolized by an endless parade of tedious zombie nerdbait (how many Night of the Living Dead knockoffs do we really need?), but apparently I just wasn't looking hard enough, because Blindness was wonderful. The writing style is pretty interesting: nameless people talking to each other in quotation mark-less blocks of text for pages and pages at a time in a nameless country, though unlike some other books I've read that have used this conceit, the characters are all well-fleshed-out and relatable. The plot - an epidemic of sudden blindness strikes an unnamed country and a small group of people led by a mysteriously unaffected woman tries to survive – is fairly straightforward, but what makes the book memorable is the artful detail in this world. It reminded me of a much more literary version of the first half of Stephen King's The Stand in its depictions of the blindness' catastrophic effects, but Saramago's decision to focus the action on the asylum where the victims are quarantined and the savage Lord of the Flies atmosphere inside makes for a much more interesting psychological landscape. He won the 1998 Nobel Prize and I picked this book up after he died since it seemed to be one of his most-liked, I think I'll grab The History of the Siege of Lisbon next. ( )

I can't get past his style of writing. The story may be good but the telling is dreadful. ( )

I can *almost* slip this book into that enormous category that is zombie-fiction, but alas, no. There are no zombies here.

There are, however, an increasingly large number of people going blind until there is only one left.


Chaos ensues... one heartbreaking step at a time.

Simple concept, of course, but in this case, it is brilliantly executed. The writing is clear and transforms us every step of the way from our modern society into a cold cinder of civilization, with the fall of humanity experienced first-hand and in great detail. It's no gimmick of a novel.

It's heartfelt. The characters scramble by their fingernails as they degrade into offal-smeared wretches, and all the while they still try to hold on to decency even while sickness and the collapse of all civilization ensues. Heartbreaking.

When I first started reading this, I assumed it was going to be something of an offshoot from that great classic, The Day of the Triffids, where just as much devastation happens when most of humanity goes blind as from the man-eating plants that gobble them up, only this brings us much closer to the complete hell without a commentary on niche species and survival of the fittest. Indeed, we bear witness to every single degradation that mankind can inflict on itself, from suicide, murder, rape, and apathy.

I'm an honest optimist. I actually see a lot of hope in this book, but I'm not going to kid anyone here... this is a harsh one.

It's also one of those kinds of novels that outdoes itself. It's not a simple dystopia. It's an exemplary one. Hell, it probably should be on the top of all the lists if you call yourself a fan of the genre. :)
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